Pop's future

Shayne Ward has transcended his upbringing and survived lurid tabloid stories. Can the X-Factor winner now be the one to beat the machinations of the pop industry? A remarkably candid interview by Paul Flynn

It is a week before the start of the 25-date X Factor live tour when I meet the recent winner of the Saturday night ITV talent show series and this year's pop pin-up. 'It is mental,' says Shayne Ward, unprompted, referring to the past six months of his life and the kind of accelerated Cinderella story upon which these shows depend. 'I've just had Louis Walsh on the phone.' He repeats the name of the Westlife manager and X Factor judge. 'Louis Walsh.' Louis is now Ward's manager. 'I had Simon Cowell on yesterday.' He shakes his head once more in dumbfounded amazement. 'Simon Cowell! Honestly. And these people are telling me that they're excited about working with me. I'm like, "You working with me?" I'm working with them! That's the exciting bit. I can't get my head round it.'

The 21-year-old singer is dressed as if he has just been excused from the local branch of the Boy Band Academy in a borrowed flat cap, distressed denims, a slashed-neck T-shirt and scuffed sneakers, but really he is about as raw and unmediated as any pop star arriving in the public realm can be right now. 'I just can't sort of accept where I am now,' he says sincerely. 'It doesn't feel real. If somebody tells me I'm famous I say, "I'm not." I can't see myself as famous and I don't think I'll ever call myself famous. I definitely don't feel famous. To me, this is just a job.'

Long before his X Factor triumph he had already tasted his own unfair share of local infamy, and he is wary of the press and of success. Like many of his peers from reality TV - the teenager who could sing through his stammer (Gareth Gates) and the Scottish lass who sang for her supper (Michelle McManus); the gay public schoolboy (Will Young) and the girl who decked a toilet attendant in a Surrey nightclub (Cheryl Tweedy of Popstars: the Rivals winners Girls Aloud) - Ward threatens to add a little grit and then some to the world of manufactured pop.

Shayne Ward won the second series of X Factor in December, beating acts such as four shrill Irish siblings called the Conway Sisters, who became figures of national opprobrium, and former goat-herd and male stripper Chico, who this month is enjoying his own No 1 hit with his novelty song that asks, 'What time is it?' ('It's Chico time!').

Ward's own debut, 'That's My Goal', was the third fastest-selling non-charity single in British musical history, shifting 732,000 copies in three days to bag the 2005 Christmas No 1 spot. 'I know it was massive now,' he says from over the table in a Soho restaurant, 'but I'm pretty much convinced that it would have sold the exact same amount of copies if it had been by [the second-placed] Andy [Abraham] or [the third-placed] Journey South.' No it wouldn't, I say. When Ward took the stage, it wasn't just his manifest talent that shone; rather, he seemed a symbol of the best of Asbo Britain. Not that the boy himself wears an ounce of aggression; even his number one crop is more tennis-ball cutie than schemie thug.

'I had no idea about this stuff back then, anyway. When someone from the record label told me how much it had sold, I said, "Oh, is that any good?"'

His first professional dates will be playing to an audience average of 10,000 with a supporting cast of former X Factor contestants, although he has already brought the house down at a Childline event in Dublin and a gig at the Arndale Centre in Manchester, performing to the same shoppers he used to serve until recently, when he worked there in the women's shoe department of the branch of New Look. 'I walked out after that performance and honestly just thought, "Oh. My. God."'

What do you think being famous feels like, I ask. 'I'm not sure, to be honest. Different from this?' He laughs, with only a hint of thawing nerves. So I ask him what he wanted to get out of appearing on The X Factor. There is not so much as a beat of hesitation. 'A better life.'

When Ward became noticed on The X Factor, the tabloids splashed with the story that his 50-year-old father Martin Ward was jailed last July for eight years for the rape of a pensioner, in a crime described by the judge as being 'of the worst possible kind'. It was then revealed that Shayne's older brother - also Martin Ward - now 28, was arrested for the murder of pregnant mother Janet Johnson seven years ago, but subsequently found innocent and cleared of all charges. Two uncles and a cousin have also received life sentences for the murder of a Stockport scrapyard boss. Both uncles were already serving five-year terms at the time of the trial for gang rapes. A further Martin Ward, another of Shayne's cousins, was given a life sentence for raping an OAP in Heston, west London, after posing as a gardener to gain entry to her home.

Shayne Ward knew what was coming. 'Once I got in the public eye there was no going back,' he says, 'and I knew that family past would get brought up. I just thought that's the way it is. Because I didn't want that to get in the way of me trying my best to get on. The way I think about all this is that you've got to rise above it. I was never going to let the papers get to me.'

Were you scared about the moment stuff was going to break?

'I was more upset for my family,' he says. At the time he was still living at home in Clayton, north Manchester, with his mum - 'I'm a proper mummy's boy' - and three sisters. He is one of seven children, all between the ages of 17 and 30: Mark, Martin, Michael, Lisa, Shayne's twin sister Emma, Shayne himself, then little sister Leona.

'I was going here, there and everywhere with the show and I had something to occupy my mind all the time it was going on. They didn't. My family are sat at home reading the papers and thinking about it all. They've got time to get upset about it all over again. I just remember saying, right from the start of the show, "My focus is the show and your focus has got to be me." It was a way of taking their focus off the other stuff going on around us.'

Ward went to school in Openshaw, another depressed Manchester suburb that has been overlooked in the regenerative glow of the city centre's complete urban Botox. He says he was a good boy at school - first St Gregory's, then St Peter's - and his natural compliance suggests nothing to the contrary. He wishes that he had done better on paper, in exams, 'But then,' he adds 'doesn't everybody?' His favourite teacher was Mrs Kennedy, the head of Performing Arts. 'Three schools mixed in the area and before the other two came we didn't have anything like that at school. She came and I was like, "What's Performing Arts?" and she said, "Singing, dancing and acting." Instantly I was like, "Love it!"'

Unsurprisingly, he was cast as the romantic lead in school productions. He played Elvis Presley in a stagey sing-along and Tony in a St Peter's production of West Side Story. The extended Ward family all cheered along. There is music in the family. A couple of uncles play the working men's circuit in London and sister Emma is another reality TV audition singing regular.

Shayne Ward has only bought one CD in his life, a copy of his favourite record of all time, Daniel Bedingfield's lachrymose ballad, 'If You're Not the One', which he sang to tremendous effect as one of his first winning performances on The X Factor. Now he will be able to afford to add to his collection. His earliest musical memory is singing Kylie and Jason's 'Especially For You' with Emma for the family one Christmas when he was four years old.

While Ward fancied a place at Salford Tech to study performing arts, he instead left school at 16, five years ago now, 'just to help my mum with the rent, really'. But he started his reality show journey shortly afterwards, when sister Lisa chaperoned him on a trip to London to try out for Popstars: The Rivals. As a result of this, she and, by extension, the family are still friends with fellow Mancunian Sarah Harding from Girls Aloud, the group that won the show. Once you penetrate the world of reality talent TV it is very much a game of ever decreasing circles.

Shayne had reached the stage of the final 30 boys hoping to battle it out for a place in the ill-fated One True Voice. His audition piece was a version of the country song 'If Tomorrow Never Comes', popularised by Ronan Keating. The judges on the show were Geri Halliwell, Louis Walsh and Pete Waterman. Geri liked him, Louis loved him and Pete wasn't sure. He missed out when the auditions turned to dancing, although it hardly needs pointing out that One True Voice would only dance their way as far as the dumper.

Ward thinks these things happen for a reason. 'I'm a lot more level-headed now. A lot more focused. I was just a little boy then. I couldn't even grow a moustache. If I'd been put in that band I more or less wouldn't have known what to do.'

None the less, when he told his colleagues in New Look that he was going for the X Factor auditions, none of them really believed him. 'It was more or less, "OK, love. Very good."' His earnings peaked just above the minimum wage - 'I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was definitely less than £500 a month, take home.

'I wasn't sure I'd even get through in the first place. I thought I'd go for it - because my family wanted me to - but I never really believed that I would get through, let alone win. That's the way I looked at it. I would have been happy going back to a job in Manchester. Of course I would.'

It is to his credit that he has clearly never wished his upbringing any other way. ' I had the best lifestyle that anyone could be given. Cos there was seven of us we couldn't afford holidays. But my mum would take us for walks down the park and, to be honest, you can have money as a kid and have all these holidays and all this stuff around you but I don't believe that brings you any more happiness than I had as a kid. I don't think that money makes you any better brought up than I was. We all had love for each other. We're all healthy.'

Did it break the family apart when your father went on trial?

'When it first came out, like I said before, we all rose above it. This might sound corny but we've got too much love and we're too strong to let anything at all come between us. We dealt with my dad in our own way, but there was no way that we were going to let the story getting into the papers again ruin our lives... Now we know that something good has come from all of this. And hopefully I'm going to carry on that goodness. Hopefully I'm going to succeed.

'All families have secrets. I don't want that. I wanted to be honest from day one. Look, we've had some horrible times but we've also been brought up the best way we could be. These things happen to people. It's just... unfortunate. But we've got to get through it and move on.'

Have you been in touch with your dad through the whole X Factor experience?

'I haven't been in touch with my dad recently, no. I want to make it public knowledge that I love my dad. At the end of the day, my dad's my dad whether we speak ever again or not. Do you know what I mean? That's just the way I look at it. He's my dad. But no, I wasn't in touch with him through all this.'

It was brave, I tell him, even to consider going in for X Factor.

'Well, it was. None of this is the sort of thing you can keep quiet. But I'd rather be taken for the way I am. The way we all are. We're honest people.'

Of course Ward is a fan of reality TV talent formats. 'I think they're brilliant because, more than anything, people who are trying to get record deals just try their hardest for so long. They try everything, for years, and still get nowhere. Then these competitions come up and give the people at home the chance to decide whether they like the singers or not. So it's not just one person or a few people at a record company deciding who gets a chance to go out there and prove what they can do. It puts it to the test. I think they're brilliant.

'I mean, I do feel a bit of pressure because of what happened last year, with Steve. Which is a shame. I do feel sorry for the guy, but it didn't work out for him.'

Steve is Steve Brookstein, the craggily handsome pub crooner who won The X Factor in 2004 and released one single, a dreary cover of the Phil Collins standard 'Against All Odds' not so very different from Westlife's own version of the song (with Mariah Carey) in 2000. Westlife are managed by X Factor judge Louis Walsh and signed to Syco, the record label owned by fellow X Factor judge Simon Cowell. The 2005 version of the song limped to No 1, barely promoted, before the memory of Steve Brookstein was erased from the official X Factor history forever. His name was not mentioned once in the 2005 series. He has not released a single since.

Shayne Ward knows this stuff, of course. He echoes the party line at Syco about what happened to Brookstein. 'It didn't work out.'

Why not?

'I'm not sure. You'd have to ask him, I suppose. Obviously there is a lot of feeling out there, like, "Is Shayne Ward going to be another talent show flop?" And if I am then I am. If it happens it happens. But if I do not stick around then I know I will not slate the show.'

Because you had nothing to lose?

'More or less, yeah.'

There is a deep level of cynicism and suspicion about reality TV show winners and their chances of any kind of lasting success. Such is the immediate dip in interest in the winners once the show has finished that contestants on Big Brother are given sharp warnings about this happening from the show's producers beforehand, the subtext of which is basically 'you will not be liked'. The talent formats like The X Factor are predicated on the prize of a kind of stardom, though, and some semblance of a career has to be seen to be operational for a few months afterwards, at least. Otherwise it would be a show without an ending; a joke without a punchline.

Silently, we understand as an audience that the longevity of these shows is dependent on them making stars of their judges, not their contestants, as the making of the legend of Simon Cowell on both sides of the Atlantic suggests. But everyone around Shayne Ward seems assured that this time around they have found the real deal out of the show.

Two weeks after I meet him in Soho I travel with the X Factor tour to the first of three dates at the Manchester Evening News Arena, over which time the collected talent will entertain nigh on 50,000 Mancunian pop fans. When I meet Ward now he is wearing a black logo-embossed Gucci dinner jacket, tailored white shirt, slim-fit black trousers and the exact same loafers as his minder. He looks as if he is auditioning for the empty fifth seat in Westlife, vacated when Brian McFadden fled their nest.

I am played four of the songs that will appear on Ward's debut album when it is released on 17 April. To these ears, they succeed in channelling the middling ways of some of the most successful male artists of the last five years. There is the merest hint of Craig David, a bit of Enrique Iglesias and a great deal of Westlife (most of the songs have been produced by Syco's in-house producer and the inventor of the Westlife sound, Steve Mac). They are all ballads, although apparently Simon Cowell has personally requested - from the end of a telephone in Los Angeles where he is overseeing the next round of transatlantic reality hopefuls on American Idol - a sped-up version of Shayne's next single, 'No Promises'. Kindness makes me presume that all this is to keep Shayne Ward in his comfort zone during the promotion of the record.

My notes upon leaving the hotel room where I am played the material are scribbled over with one word in capitals: EDGELESS. Later that night I make another note in my book. 'It seems like Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell are so concerned with audience share that they have forgotten the artist in the middle of their latest plans for commercial domination.' I cannot help thinking that Shayne Ward deserves more than this radio mush. It may be bought by many, but it will be loved by few. If Walsh and Cowell are being true to Shayne Ward when they tell him that they are excited by working with him, I wonder whether they are also being true to themselves?

Later that evening I sit through the X Factor show and watch 13,000 giddy Mancunians going potty for their homecoming hero. The girl that I am standing next to - 13, if she's a day - involuntarily tips her head down and vomits violently when Shayne walks on stage, such is her excitement. The stadium fills with appropriately football-crowd enthusiasm and sings as one, blue-screened mobile phones aloft, as Shayne sings 'That's My Goal'. I have not witnessed such hysteria since I sat wide-eyed through Wham!'s Club Fantastic tour at the Manchester Apollo in 1983 (when a young George Michael batted a shuttlecock from down his badminton shorts into the audience), or perhaps when the Spice Girls played this very same venue in 1999.

Backstage, before the X Factor finalists make their way onto the stage for their final roll-call I bump into Fay McKeever, Shayne Ward's charmingly unaffected girlfriend from before, during and pleasingly after the X Factor show spun through its apoplectic whirlwind. 'Fucking hell,' she says, wiping back tears as Shayne takes to the stage. 'Last time I was here was for Justin Timberlake. This time it's for my boyfriend.' I drift away from the stadium with the sincere hope that it's not the last.